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Comcast Disables VCR Scheduling In New Guide
An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has quietly launched a new on-screen guide for its cable boxes. What they're not advertising is that they've removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service. What this means is that VCR owners are now forced to pay for Comcast's $20/month DVR service or else start their recordings manually. For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?" Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.
Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording -- i.e. anything you can get over-the-air can be recorded via firewire stream. Incidentally, many basic cable channels are unprotected as well.
But, more importantly, you can change the channel through the firewire port.
I hacked together a really, really poor example of this for OSX using Apple's Firewire SDK -- http://www.remix.net/wiki/Clover
It's woefully out of date, but channel changing worked when I put it together. It would stand to reason that this feature would work for any firewire client unless they've disabled that as well.
Here in Central NJ Comcast charges me $16.95/mo for a dual tuner HD cable box, able to record two HD programs at once.
If I had a TiVo I'd need what, two CableCards PLUS a monthly TiVo subscription?
Comcast's DVR service takes the place of a conventional digital cable box and adds about $7 month to give me dual-channel HD DVR service.
When I realized that, I turned in my conventional digital cable box and cancelled my TiVo subscription and saved over $20 month.
I miss TiVo's added features/interface, but saving $20/month is pretty good.
Ken
I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...
Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.
It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If only Comcast was not a monopoly in my area.
I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
And that's how we got VHS over Betamax.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The Comcast digital signal in my area suffers from serious digital artifacts, and looks much worse than their analog signal.. Especially in shadows, and on visually busy material like Formula 1. My DVD recorder produces much better results when recording the analog signal. Comcast techs would just shrug and say their head end gear was old.
I got sick of it and dumped comcast. Now I just download the F1 race. The bbc coverage is much better than speedtv.
I think there's a sort of problem with your idea in that it assumes the the market is being driven by a class of dedicated well-funded consumers. The idea is reinforced by the fact that people use the word "consumer" so often when talking about normal everyday people, but essentially there isn't much of a consumer class.
I know some people are scratching their heads right now and thinking that I'm spouting nonsense, so let me explain. You have a whole bunch of businesses out there trying to sell us all things. They employ researchers and scientists. Food manufacturers have chemists and biologists trying to figure out how to make you addicted to their food. Car companies have dedicated salesmen who practice all day convincing people that this year's model is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Verizon employs psychologists to craft their ad campaigns so that you get warm fuzzy feelings whenever you hear the phrase "can you hear me now?" Yeah, I know, it annoys the piss out of you, but it also breeds a sense of familiarity that makes you feel safe, even if you don't realize it.
So they have armies of people, spending all day trying to figure out how to get as much out of you as possible, while providing you with the least possible service. You? You've got nothing. You have no psychologists on staff, no market researchers. You don't have lawyers or lobbyists, no professional analysts. You don't even have time-- you're too busy going to work, trying to stay in shape, to clean the house, trying to live your life with your friends and family.
There are exceptions. If you're a professional IT guy than you know about buying computers. If you're a psychologist than maybe you catch some of the tricks that these companies use. If you're rich, maybe you can pay personal shoppers to find you all the good deals. But most of us, most of the time, are somewhat at the mercy of all the professionals looking to bilk us.
Yes, I'm exaggerating a little. It's not quite that bad. The free market works a little, but for the "free market" to work they way people tend to assume, you'd need for a lot of people to be "consumers" on equal footing with the businesses they're buying from. They'd need to be perfectly informed of all their choices, and they'd need to be able to have the expertise to understand all the relevant ramifications of their choices. They'd need to be able to spot all the psychological manipulation employed by psychologists and professional salesmen, plus a team of lawyers to counter the business's lawyers. Even then, we'd need to assume that businesses didn't have any extra-special dirty tricks up their sleeve.
Even Adam Smith, when proposing the whole damned thing, implied that it would require moral and wise businessmen doing business with well informed customers. You can't necessarily blame people for not having enough "backbone" when you have several large multinational organizations working day and night to manipulate them.
How would you argue the free-market approach to cable television should work? Should cities let anyone dig up the road whenever they want, even if 10 companies are doing it constantly? Should they let nobody dig up the roads, and force cable companies to piece together rights of way by individually negotiating with private landowners, even though it's nearly impossible to actually piece together rights of way in that manner? Should they pick some arbitrary number, like top 3 bidders get to dig up roads? Should the city bury its own lines and sell access to multiple ISPs? I'm not quite sure what the most free-market approach is for something like that, which has physical constraints on getting to the market.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Strong regulation? You're on crack. It's deregulation that allows for this sort of BS. In other
countries, companies that have "ownership" of physical rights of way have to share that with
competitors. This is why they have Gigabit ethernet when much of the US is lucky to get 2 mbit.
Infact, the wannabe robber barons are whining about how gross under-regulation infact constitutes
crushing over-regulation when it is obviously not the case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Last I heard "Consumer Reports" hasn't gone bankrupt.
I live in a condo. FiOS has not been rolled out. DSL doesn't come here. Satellite is prohibited by the community. And there is only one cable company in my town: Comcast. I have two choices: Dial up + indoor antenna, or Comcast. Comcast can charge whatever the hell they feel like. And they do. My complex pays more than the rest of the town. And I don't live in the sticks either. It's just what happens when you have no competition. Please tell me how to make the all-powerful free market fix this.